The Whole World Is Failing Kindergarten

I read a few polls taken in China, ranging anywhere from 2% to 49% in things like being "engaged" in your job, "job satisfaction," "liking your job," and a couple other ways to describe being satisfied with one's employment. Factored in here must be the chances of getting accurate information out of China, which, admittedly, isn't as hard as it once was, but still not easy. Also all these people surveyed HAD jobs before the survey and there are MOOOOORE than enough people to replace them AFTER the survey. If you know what I'm saying... So I'm absolutely shocked at the results of this survey done by Gallup that came up with only 6% engaged in their jobs! And probably 5% of those were just too scared of losing the jobs they hate to say anything against their jobs that could be construed as grounds for firing.

And it's not only boring factory jobs like this poor sod in the pic. It's lots of other jobs too. Jobs that are sometimes interesting. The main reason, I read in another article like this, for dissatisfaction is the main reason anyone gets a job: money. Chinese are still woefully underpaid even though salaries are going up around the country. I did a speed dating exercise in a class where some of the boys were chosen as eligible bachelors and several groups of girls had to interview them, (like the job interview you get on a first date), then decide which bachelor they wanted to date. I told the bachelors to lie all they wanted to make the girls love them. Of course one of the questions asked by all the girls was about salary and even though I had wild and outrageous lies being told like one guy was a North Korean spy, another was the father of 42 children, the most fantastic salary given was less than I'm making here. And I'm making less than anybody I know. I kinda felt a bit sorry for those kids. Because with that kind of thinking, I know they'll all get jobs standing in front of restaurants in the summer heat dancing around in a teddy bear suit full of their sweat for 12 hours and they'll be deliriously happy with a few bucks an hour for that. Until they realize how much more they should be making. Then every second in that sauna suit will haunt them.

I want some people around here to like their jobs. I need the bus driver who takes me 4 times a week to and from the South Campus here to be ENGAGED in his work. I don't want him grumbling under his breath, "Look at this guy. Thinks he's so big, well, he IS big, but thinks he's so great cuz he's a university teacher. He's no better than me. From Canada. Who cares? I could go to Canada. If I had just ONE more mark on my university entrance exam. One lousy mark, or just the money to bribe a person to give it to me! THEN he wouldn't think he's better than me. THEN I'd have a job where I don't have to work holidays and weekends to feed my four kids. Oh curse my superior reproductive genes! Curse the one child policy! AH TA MA DE!!!" Then he jerks the bus off the bridge or into oncoming traffic. I don't need that right now in my life. The driver's wife and four kids don't need that. The other people on the bus don't need that. The thousands of friends and family members of all involved in the accident don't need that in their lives. THEIR friends don't need that.

So, pay a bus driver a little bit more and make thousands of lives better. Could it really be that simple? It certainly could, and it is just as simple in reverse. Screw a worker a little bit more and make thousands of lives worse. THAT in a nutshell is why life sucks more and more in direct proportion to the increasing income disparity throughout the world. I'm sure of two things: this, and that I'll never be able to prove this. But can you disprove it? Can you prove that the reason a friendly stranger said hello to you today wasn't because some cardboard collector in China just discovered recycling depots are paying a little more per kilo of cardboard? It could be! Or can you prove that the person who put gum in the pay toilet coin slot didn't do it because some Chinese businessman had to sacrifice his golden week family holiday to go into work three days in a row without pay? That could be too! The butterfly effect they call it, isn't it? I didn't just think this up.

It does my head in that the solution to all the indescribable suffering in this world could be so simple. What did it say in the Bible? Something like "From the mouths of babes and sucklings comes perfect praise." Yeah, cuz they haven't been infected by the avarice and greed of the world yet. If you want to know why the world is so full of pain, anguish, horror, squalor and filth, it's basically because all the people with any power, the rulers, leaders, dictators, bankers, captains of industry, and the owners of the companies we work for, are almost all failing kindergarten.

Everything we learn in kindergarten, (and I've worked in several kindergartens in several countries, we all teach our kids the same basic things), gets replaced with euphemistic phrases that mean essentially the opposite. Let me give you the example I hate the most: In kindergarten we're taught not to cheat. "Cheaters never win. Winners never cheat." When we get out into the business world and learn that adults HAVE TO cheat, we then start saying, "It's just business." In kindergarten, we're taught not to bully. In real life we say, "Hey, don't take it personally. I'm an equal opportunity asshole." In kindergarten we're taught to not do bad things. As an adult we say, "If I didn't do it, someone else would have." In kindergarten we're taught to be patient and wait our turns. As we get older we learn that he who hesitates is lost. We pride ourselves on spontaneity. But it has been wisely said that "intuition is the suspension of logic due to impatience." Patience is but the art of concealing our impatience. But it seems a lost art in the fast paced world of today. Lost along with our childhoods I suppose.

And what about honesty is the best policy? That's about as rare nowadays as an alien abduction insurance policy. (And those actually DO exist!) Honesty as a policy though, I'm not sure IT still exists. If it does, it has to be in a little child who hasn't yet learned to lie. And how can you blame the kids for learning to lie? We lie our asses off to THEM! Santa, Easter Bunny, fairies, ghosts, you can do anything you put your mind to, and then we ask, "Did you take the last cookie? Be honest." The kid should  just say, "Should I be honest or should I be as honest as you've been to me?" BAM! Cookie earned!

My Mom used to call it, "Telling stories." "But Mom, I think I saw Jeff opening the cookie jar." She'd say, "Are you telling me a story?" "No, really! He had chocolate on his hands too! I saw it!" "If you're telling me stories, you'll get it!" I usually WAS and I usually DID. I put my faith in the story over the truth because in the story, I was such a nice little boy! Even sometimes when I got cracked with the wooden spoon I would feel a little self-indulgent outrage having almost completely convinced my SELF I hadn't taken the last cookie. I believe the mental ailment that allows people to ignore simple rules of honesty and morality in favour of their selfishness, is when they become such horrible people that they either completely deconstruct due to self-loathing, or they slip into a mental state of defensive conviction that they REALLY are good little boys.

I am living in a society that actually encourages the latter! It's bizarre! Not long ago, when I quit for the first time, I talked to some people here at the university about just quitting the other job I have and working for them. But since they pay a very low salary, I wanted them to allow me to work part time elsewhere. The person I was talking to knows another friend of mine here and I received a call almost immediately from her. It's Faith. I have mentioned her before and have said that I have faith in Faith. This day my faith took a bit of a hit. She called me up and said, "Dave, don't tell TUST that you will be working somewhere else part time." I said, "Why not, honesty is the best policy, right?" She gave me a scoff I had received from a few Chinese people who heard me use the words honest and business less than a thousand words apart. She says, "Everyone knows everybody teaches part time a little bit, you just don't tell them!" I said, "Why not? It'd be fun to start a new policy here, wouldn't it?" Another, "Oh you're so naïve!" chuckle.

The unnecessary lie. I have seen so many examples of it over here in Asia! What do you say about a place that has so blatant a disrespect for honesty? Why would ANY dumb schmuck do business with them? Ahem...

Another example. Three times I have tried to buy a Kia Tiger jersey in my size. Three times I have been guaranteed the product and three times after waiting, (even after sending a shirt my size and not receiving it back!!!), they couldn't do it. That shirt I blogged about? The reason I call the movie, "The Big Short," "The Big Shirt?" THAT'S the shirt I lost. Of all the shirts I could have sent and lost, it's the only one with a story behind it! And why? Because of this culturally pathological imperative to avoid any unpleasant truth. Even though we all learned how to tell even unpleasant truths in Kindergarten! But as the saying goes, "If you practice anything a lot, you get good at it. Including B.S." And it must have taken endless gruelling deception workouts to come up with the following gem of self-cleansing: "It's only a lie if you get caught."

Call it what you will, "statement recalibration," "spinning," "massaging the facts," it is a lie whether you get caught or not. Simple. And I love these people who start statements with things like, "In all honesty..." "In truth..." "To tell the truth..." "I'm gonna be honest with ya..." like it's an exception to the rule. It certainly has been over here in Asia in my experience. That's why when people say, "Why, you must have had some great experiences over there!" I sometimes say, "Yeah, I have some stories. Yeah I have some doosies!" Meaning stories the way my Mother used the word, of course. The job I'm working right now is like the Stephen King of stories!

Then, of course, the big one. Playing well with others. Be nice to one another. As Bill and Ted said, "Be excellent to each other!" Again, kindergarten simple. So why is it so hard to do as we get older? It's because of greed. It's been infecting the minds of the white man since he came to North America. The American and Canadian natives had words for this disease of the brain. "Wasichu" or "one who eats the fat. Like Cartman who eats all the skin off the KFC while the other boys are helping bring the groceries in then leaves. Washichu.

 

It was also called "Wetigo." The white man suffering from it was called a Windigo and was said to comsume others souls and his own with greed. The natives understood this mental illness better than us because they were more advanced than us.

But what do we call it today? "Ambition." What do women call it? "Goals." When they say they want a man with goals. A man going somewhere. They want a mentally ill, selfish Windigo who will probably just be a big asshole. They don't know it because we're not very advanced. We're all FAILING KINDERGARTEN! But why are things like this?

Because we have this notion that good behaviour is childish. Kindness is weakness. Honesty is infantile. Being a good person is naïve.

But we start every child off with the exact opposite advice because we want them to succeed in life. Look, there are two logical things we could do here: Either stop lying to children and tell them that life is hell and teach them how to cheat people and get more than their fair share of everything to ease their suffering a little bit, or to have the adults stop being assholes to each other.

Now that I've written this out I realize which one of those would be a million times easier.

Talk about yer all time blog backfires!